Just a lot of hot air?

Why, in the era of webinars, wikipedia and www.automatedtrader.net, do people still go to conferences?

Why, in the era of webinars, wikipedia and
www.automatedtrader.net, do people still go to conferences?
Aren't all the research tools and market intelligence you could
possibly need already at your fingertips? Well, not quite all.
Despite the devilish details you can summon up in an instant from
the bowels of the world wide web, there is still no substitute
for eating, drinking and sleeping with a subject for a couple of
days among like-minded folk. Deprived of all that is normally
considered necessary to sustain life - natural light, fresh air,
five fruit-and-veg a day, broadband connections - conference
attendees feed instead on gossip, hearsay and rumours that may
just help them make important decisions back at the coalface.

Automated Trader didn't so much unveil astonishing truths at
TradeTech Paris as confirm some suspicions. For example,
reciprocal liquidity-sharing arrangements between Europe's new
dark pools and trading venues are non-existent. Negotiations are
in such an advanced state that Turquoise CEO Eli Lederman met
Howard Edelstein, his counterpart at NYFIX, for the first time in
the CNIT exhibition hall. And although Chi-X claims to be in
discussion with two dark pools, one leading broker admitted to
having just one deal in place. In the US.

It was also clear that the buy side is thoroughly disenchanted
with MiFID and best execution, barely six months in. A poll held
at the conference revealed that 44 per cent of delegates believe
that 'everyone has a different definition' of best execution.
This is strange, because several brokers have been trotting out
the very same definition since November. Asset manager: "Can you
deliver best execution in Europe?" Broker: "Why certainly, we
connect to Chi-X". (This answer is even given when the broker is
not directing orders to the multilateral trading venue.) Stranger
still that this definition is considered appropriate by brokers
when Chi-X itself doesn't even accept it and will route orders to
other venues if it can't meet required criteria.

But those that still believe in a truly pan-European equity
trading market will have been cheered by a voice from beyond the
conference hall that raised a subject that had hitherto lacked
attention in it. In a well-timed speech, Charlie McCreevy,
European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services threatened
regulation in the event of further delays to the implementation
of the Code of Conduct for interoperability between clearing and
settlement infrastructures. If it's true, as Knight Capital's Tom
Joyce noted in his presentation, that "what the regulator wants,
the regulator gets", there is hope that MiFID will defy the
cynics and the barriers to competition will be truly dismantled.

You also attend conferences for the stories you could tell. Like
the one about the red double-decker London bus hired by Progress
Apama to take delegates partying on Wednesday night. The bus got
stuck under a bridge en route to the venue (the Parisian
transport infrastructure not having been designed for such
vehicles) and had to wait half an hour for two somewhat rotund
French mechanics to free it by releasing air from the tyres, thus
lowering the bus. But because the tyre valves were facing in,
rather than out, the passengers then endured a further half-hour
wait for the arrival of a third mechanic who was thin enough to
crawl under the bus and release the air from the tyres without
having the air subsequently released from him. You won't find
that one on the web. Not for a couple of weeks, anyway.